Family's despair over missing tot

The family of a three-year-old British girl feared to have been kidnapped while on holiday in Portugal have not lost hope for her "safe return".

Little Madeleine McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, disappeared on Thursday night from a hotel room in a Mark Warner holiday village in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve.

Her parents, Gerald and Kate McCann, released an official statement saying: "This is a particularly difficult time for the family and we are all comforting each other.

"We have received lots of support from friends, family and the public and the family are very grateful for that support.

"At this time all the family's focus is in assisting the UK and in particular the Portuguese authorities in securing Madeleine's safe return."

Both parents were dining nearby but found Madeleine missing during one of their half-hourly checks on the room where she and her two-year-old twin brother and sister were sleeping.

Between their 9.30pm and 10pm checks at the Ocean Club resort, Mr and Mrs McCann found the apartment had been broken into through a window and Madeleine gone, according to the young girl's aunt.

The anti-kidnap unit of Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is in contact with the McCann family's local police force in Leicestershire. A SOCA liaison officer based in Lisbon is also in contact with Portugal's chief of police.

A spokesman for holiday firm Mark Warner said: "Our priority is to find the girl and to make sure that the parents are OK and there are masses of people working on that.

"Our staff are looking after them at the moment in whatever way they can but we can only imagine how awful it is for them. We are all hoping that she is asleep under a bush somewhere and we will find her soon."

He said the apartment the family were staying in was surrounded by other apartments, all of which have "quite sophisticated" locks on the doors.

Guests are being asked if they saw anyone acting suspiciously in the area, he said, adding that Mark Warner has never had cases of missing or abducted children before.

"We are hoping it's not that, though," he said. "It's the last thing we want but we have to investigate all avenues."

He said Mark Warner offers families a baby-sitting service where they can drop off their children for the night. "Those facilities were available but for whatever reason they were not being used," he added.

It is "too early to tell" if guests would be leaving early or prospective visitors were cancelling their holidays as a result of the incident.

"They need comforting as much as anyone, depending on how close they were to the these particular guests," he said.

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